Scott Alexander

Grants Pass, SCOTUS, says it's legal to clear encampments.

It continues to trend down.

And New Mare, London Breed, to Daniel Lurie, continues to trend down.

And the same pattern seems to apply for sites with over six tents or structures.

Scott writes, but it starts in 2019, peaks during the pandemic, and then declines.

This can't really show whether 2019 was already higher than some previous year.

Here, LinkinPost is an interesting graph of Seattle's homeless sweeps, that is the number of times the police acted against encampments.

Here's a graph, sweeps of unhoused people in Seattle 2008 to 2023.

After a pause during COVID, encampment removals have surged to record levels.

So we see a graph that has surges between around 2014 to 2020, fairly large surge in 2020, very few during the 2020 to 2022 period, and then a larger surge than any before from 2022 to 2024.

Scott writes, but it doesn't tell us whether encampments are increasing or the police are taking them more seriously.

It does rule out a story where encampments are increasing because the police are no longer taking action.

Aside from the pandemic, police are taking more action than ever, at least as measured here.

People with loud boomboxes in public places.

All I have to say about this one is that it's terrible and I hate it.

Overall, it's surprisingly hard to find data confirming that disorder has increased.

Littering seems to be down.

Graffiti is unclear, probably varies by city.

Shoplifting seems to be up 20% from generational lows, but still lower than the 1990s.

Homelessness seems to be up 25% from generational lows and equal to the 1990s.